Mercury

Project Mercury was America's first program aimed at putting a man in
space.

The three objectives of the project were:

To place a manned spacecraft in orbit around Earth

To investigate the effects of space on a man

To develop and test a safe means to recover the spacecraft and astronaut

The project was initiated in 1958 and lasted nearly five years; being concluded in 1953.

There were two type of mission: sub-orbital and orbital. The sub-orbital
missions used a Redstone launch vehicle that put a manned capsule into space
that returned before a full orbit was completed. The orbital missions used
an Atlas launch vehicle that put a manned capsule into space that returned
after at least one complete orbit of the Earth.

The manned spacecraft was a single seat cone shaped capsule. The base of
the cone housed retro-rockets to slow the capsule's speed of descent on
re-entry and was fitted with a heat shield to withstand temperatures of up
to 3000 degrees generated by air friction as the capsule entered the
atmosphere. Each capsule was named by the astronaut; the number 7 was
added to respect the number of astronauts in the team.